I don’t know enough about those other cases and circumstances to comment much, other than to say Richard is a fairly common name, but all intriguing links should be explored.
In this case, the "Richard" referred to on the Saint Christopher medal is Richard Robison, whose neck the medal was placed around.
The interesting thing about that fact was that Richard Robison was not a Catholic and none of his friends or business associates ever recalled him wearing such a medal. Thus it appears that the killer himself place the medal around his neck.
MODERATOR
Thanks for clearing that up, interesting about the valery Percy case in that her father was a government figure, didn’t zodiac send a letter at some point saying “I will go for the government life”? I can’t recall the date of the letter but could coincide with these murders
Just out of curiosity, has anyone looked into other types of crimes involving harm in the area of the Robison crime, in the years before and after the crime?
Soze
Just out of curiosity, has anyone looked into other types of crimes involving harm in the area of the Robison crime, in the years before and after the crime?
Soze
Go page one of this thread and read on through page seven.
Here are some key points. I consider the following series of home invasion murders where the entire family is present to possibly be related. I call these the "Midwest Family Murders", as they all happen in the connected and contiguous Midwest states of Illinois (9/18/66, Percy Family, father worked in high tech business, entire family home, college coed Valerie Percy murdered), Ohio (9/27/66, Bricca Family, father worked in high tech, father, wife and daughter murdered) and Michigan (6/25/68, Robison Family, father worked in high tech, father, wife, three sons and daughter killed). Possibly related murders are the college coed murders of Valerie Percy, Illinois (9/18/66), Cheri Jo Bates, California, killed outside college library (10/30/66), Betsy Aardsma, Pennsylvania, killed inside college library (11/28/69).
COLLEGE GIRL AND FAMILY MURDERS CLUSTERED IN 1966 – 1969: ALL OR SOME OR NONE OF THESE CASES MAY BE RELATED
Sharon Bubes, Evanston, IL – Attacked in her bedroom with a hammer, 6/30/66
Valerie Percy, Kenilworth, IL – Murdered in her bedroom by hammer and long 10 – 12 inch knife, 9/18/66
Bricca Family, Cincinnati, OH – Found bound with female stockings and men’s ties, socks placed in mouth and murdered in bedrooms by knife, 9/27/66
Sims Family, Tallahassee, FL – Bound with female stockings and men’s ties, socks placed in mouth and murdered, 10/22/66
Cheri Jo Bates, Riverside, CA – Murdered at campus library by short 3 inch knife, 10/30/66
Confession letter in Cheri Jo Bates murder, Riverside, CA – probably placed in mailbox on 11/28/66
Robison Family, Good Hart, MI – All family members shot, mother and daughter beaten with a hammer, 6/25/68
Cecelia Shepard, Lake Berryessa, CA – Bound and murdered by long 10 – 12 inch knife, 9/27/69
Betsy Aardsma, State College, PA – Murdered in campus library by short 3 inch knife, 11/28/69
Joan Webster, Boston, MA – Harvard grad student abducted and killed, 11/28/81
East Coast cases:
Nov 28, 1969 Betsy Aardsma, Penn State
Nov 28, 1981 Joan Webster, Harvard
College Girl Murders:
Left: Valerie Percy
Right: Cheri Jo Bates
On September 18, 1966, Valerie Percy was brutally murdered in the mansion of her father, Bell & Howell CEO and Republican Nominee for Senate Charles Percy. With the next 34 days, two American familes would be wiped out in horrorific home invasion slaughters. Father, mother, children. These were the Bricca Family in Cincinnati, Ohio found dead on September 27, 1966 and the Sims Family killed in Tallahassee, Florida on October 22, 1966. Just 8 days later, the probable first crime of the Zodiac Killer happened in Riverside, California, the day before Halloween. This was the murder of Cheri Jo Bates on October 30, 1966.
On June 25, 1968, the Robison family would be killed in their Northern Michigan cottage, in Good Hart. Father, mother, daughter, three sons.
Was this the work of five different killers? There is evidence to suggest that.
But could these five murder sites be connected? Were there similarites between the victims, MO, geography and weapons to suggest that it was at least possible these and others were the work of one man? Yes.
There is evidence and witnesses that say Valerie Percy and Linda Bricca knew each other, and they both came from the same upper class social circles in suburban Chicago.
Valerie Percy, Cheri Jo Bates, Celia Shepard, Betsy Aardsma, Joan Webster – each young woman was a college girl.
Percy, Bricca, Sims, Bates, Robison, Webster – in each case the father had multiple connections to the world of business, high tech, computers, government and/or defense contracts.
Dr. Sims was a government official for the State of Florida Education Department and ran the computer division, and apparently was a top "nationally recognized" computer expert.
Charles Percy was the Republican nominee for US Senate, and CEO of the high tech company Bell & Howell, that made camera’s and computer like business machines.
Mr. Bricca worked for the high tech chemical company Monsanto.
Mr. Robison was a magazine publisher and looking to do a major expansion at a rural airport to create "computerized warehouse operations" and cultural centers. He then wanted to expand this idea across the country.
The Sims family being bound with stockings, mens ties and socks in their mouth matches exactly with what a Ohio detective told me was done to the Bricca family.
The father of Cheri Jo Bates worked at the Naval Weapons Facility. The father of Joan Webster was ex CIA, and was at the time the Vice President at IT&T, Defense Technologies Group.
The Percy mansion and the Robison cottage are both on or near Lake Michigan.
The Shepard murder was confirmed work of the ZODIAC, the Bates murder was probably/almost certainly ZODIAC and ZODIAC certainly sent letters to the newspaper claiming knowledge of the crime and asked his letter be published in the newspaper, and ZODIAC has been mentioned in published books as a suspect in both the Percy, Aardsma and Webster murders.
In the Robison Murders a tipster sent in clues to a newspaper with inside knowledge of the crime and asked for the name ZODIUS to appear in the newspaper.
Also, the Bricca Family murder was husband-wife-young daughter. Sims Family murder was husband-wife-youngest daughter. Both were brutal overkill stabbings, as was Percy murder, as was Robison murder, gunshots also in Sims and Robison cases. The Robison Family were shot to death. In Bubes, Percy and Robison a hammer was used. In Bricca, Sims and Shepard victims were bound. Bates and Aardsma were killed in or at college libraries, on Fall Holiday periods, with a short 3 inch knife. In Percy and Shepard an approximately FOOT LONG knife/bayonet was used.
In the possible early Zodiac crime of the Santa Barbara murders of Domingos and Edwards, the Zodiac murder on 12/20/68 of Jensen and Faraday and the Robison Family murders of 6/25/68 a .22 with rifling of six lands and grooves with a right hand twist was used.
I think the evidence shows Bates and Shepard were killed by the Zodiac, but we don’t know who the Zodiac was. In some of these cases, like Robison, there are good local suspects, who while never charged have a compelling amount of circumstantial evidence pointing towards them. In other cases, like Aardsma and Webster, there are different suspects but none that really stand out and the evidence is not very compelling and they are unsolved. In many of the cases, like Percy, Bricca and Sims, there are no real solid suspects and the cases are unsolved.
UPDATE 2013: Zodiac is now officially a POI in the Bricca case and in the Percy case. The link no longer works but you see the headline. Based on information and evidence I gave them, the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department Major Crimes Squad announced the Zodiac Killer was now a suspect in the Bricca Family murders.
The murder sites in Good Hart, Michigan (Robison Family 6/25/68), Cincinnati, Ohio (Bricca Family found 9/27/66) and Tallahassee, Florida (Sims Family 10/22/66) all are in an almost perfect vertical line on a map. Add in Kenilworth, Illinois (Valerie Percy 9/18/66) and State College, Pennsylvania (Betsy Aardsma 11/28/69) and they all form a rough cross, actually more like the Yggdrasil Symbol/Algiz Rune. The Algiz Rune translates as the English letter "Z". My POI spraypainted a Yggdrasil Symbol/Algiz Rune at the campus of a murder target. The Yggdrasil means "Tree of Life", where marriages were held in the Norse village, but also means "Tree of Terror", were enemies of the tribe were executed, under the tree but by a river so the blood could drain into it. The Algiz Rune (English letter "Z") also means to "wound severely; to mark with blood".
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MODERATOR
I didn’t read the entire thread so this may have been posted before…..
A submission from United Kingdom says the name Zodius means "He who God gives victory" and is of Celtic origin.
A few minutes ago on a toilet not very far, far away….
There supposedly was a phone call overheard on a party line in the Sims case. A woman said she heard a man say something like "Mother, I did something bad. I killed three people." They traced the phone call to Brevard County. Which is the home of Cape Canaveral.
Don’t know what know to think about that story.
The Dumler family murder. Cincinnati, Oct. 23, 1969. Same date as the Sims murders three years later (EDIT: or close). Three dead. Affluent husband. Attractive wife. Her mother. Family members herded into a backroom and killed. Similar in that way to the Boles family murders. Similar to Bricca in location and victim selection. No ties that I can see to military-industrial stuff on first glance. Husband worked for family business of sack-making. the killer used some kind of specialized bullets, which is interesting.
https://www.facebook.com/historianofthe … 6/?__cft__[0]=AZWpwtvOQjK93IU1fq0J9NgY6ZatODcCJhOwVLVl-OUNMDNEawYnJL59AkhKQCfoDBeoCE-IDOpAFx537hoR3mUuoxAw3HAY7V-kNKSIwxvs-wLOsve64JAc8M4ZbNQaMfNmUSGlEtmtrzZHMdaa-vP9&__tn__=*bH-R
Just to complete an earlier thought:
Bell and Howell made camera stuff for Here is an article about a man who created a Bell and Howell zoom lens for the Apollo 11 moon landing.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2016/6/18/ … ce-mission
Bell and Howell were understandably proud about their link to the space program and used it in advertising.
Another link: In 1960, Bell-Howell merged with a company called Consolidated Engineering Corporation in Pasadena, Calif. Prior to that, CEC had sold the NASA Joint Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) its first digital computer in 1953. ON a Wikipedia level, the company appears to have worked with NASA in the Sixties under a few different names, including machinery for satellites and Apollo missions.
Keep in mind that there are other companies that you find repeatedly in different places in the aerospace food chain of the 1960s. So this isn’t meant to single out Bell and Howell in a gotcha moment. This doesn’t mean Z worked there. It’s ust to make the point that there were connection between it and NASA and Cape Canaveral. So there’s a possible link, however slim at this point, between the Percy and the Sims family cases. And to elucidate on its connections to the missile-computer-satellite axis.
CORRECTION:
The lunar missions involving Bell and Howell (and Hughes Aircraft) are Surveyor. The article I posted was not focused on Apollo, but on Surveyor, the unmanned missions to the moon that preceded Apollo. I’ll check to see if Bell and Howell had any Apollo involvement.
Was Monsanto involved in these industries? Yes!
Here’s a little nugget from NASA from 1967. Monsanto developed flame resistant materials for the Apollo program. One such mataerial was Durette. The timeline seems to be post-1967, however.
Interesting to read that Monsanto was more like Dow in the old days – plastics, rubber, etc.
Does anyone know what Mr. Bricca did for Monsanto?
EDIT
Answer: Plastics!
He worked at the Monsanto plastics factory.
https://www.cincinnatimagazine.com/city … t-street1/
Looking back now, Jerry Bricca’s last few hours on earth seem utterly poignant. On September 25, 1966, Bricca, a 28-year-old chemical engineer, went to work at the Monsanto plastics facility on River Road in Addyston.
Another Cincinnati area murder of potential interest, from Dec 30, 1974. The victim was a nurse. Shades of Hakari, IMO.
Sylvia Cabalic, 24
There was also a Bendix Aerospace in Ann Arbor that was a contractor on the Apollo flights. Just mentioning it given the Robison family. I was going through the NASA press kits for different missions and that popped to me.
Was Dr. Sims in the Navy or military? What was his resume?
There’s a lot of information about the murders online, but almost no biography.
I saw a Reddit poster say he was in the Navy. But I haven’t seen anything confirming that in a more definitive source.
Was Dr. Sims in the Navy or military? What was his resume?
There’s a lot of information about the murders online, but almost no biography.
I saw a Reddit poster say he was in the Navy. But I haven’t seen anything confirming that in a more definitive source.
Could you provide a link to the Reddit thread and any other links to good sources of information you found about the Sims case?
Not sure if Mr. Sims ever served in the military. Not 100% sure, but I think he did have a PhD, so if true, I guess you could refer to him as Dr Sims.
What little I know of him is at the time of his death, he worked at the Florida Department of Education, directed the computer division and the newspaper announcing his death stated that he was "nationally recognized" in the field of computers.
MODERATOR
I started looking into cerium. You know the "cerous" pun/reference in that one letter, right?
Cerium and other cerous compounds have a few possible uses in this high-tech area. As it pertains to Bell and Howell/Percy, it’s commonly used in making optical lenses. Cerium (cerous oxide, I’ve forgotten which) blocks infrared light. It sounds like it’s popular in sunglasses.
Unfortunately, it’s also part of a byproduct of plutonium decomposition, so nuclear weapons. And oil refining. So that’s another popular Z industry. Also, missile locked on targets using infrared beams. And there’s a whole mirrors aspect to the bus bomb.
Doesn’t really narrow it down as much as I hoped.
I don’t know what to do with this, so I’ll just plop it down here:
A paper published in 1984. Cerium Oxide as a Highly Effective and Durable High Temperature Desulfurization Sorbent
https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/cgi/view … disstheses
The newest reproduction involved UMI Bell and Howell Information and Learning. That happened well after the Zodiac era. Nonetheless Bell and Howell and Ann Arbor, for those looking at possible connections.
